Rail Technical Advisory

Our teams will provide technical expertise throughout every step of the vehicle procurement process, ensuring your exact requirements are clearly communicated to the supplier market and that final products will meet your performance expectations. 

This means that, during an exercise that can take several years to complete, you can be sure of continuity from opening consultations through to requirements capture, supplier negotiation, design and test review, quality assessment and eventual acceptance.

We provide a wide range of specialist advisory services for the signalling and communications realm.

In Asia, we are supporting the introduction of new signalling products on systems ranging from urban metros to high speed lines. In Europe, we assist infrastructure managers during the introduction of ETCS and GSM-R, and are at the leading edge of ERTMS knowledge.

Our award-winning design and engineering teams have an established record of supporting rolling stock owners, operators, manufacturers and maintenance suppliers throughout the entire design-build-maintain lifecycle.

The core design service is supported by specialists from across the Ricardo group renowned for their expertise in fields such as structural failure investigation; noise, vibration and harmonics; and dynamics analysis including kinematic envelopes and vehicle size/load optimisation.

Past and present assignments have included: developing full bodyshell designs; overseeing refurbishment programmes; retrofitting of CCTV and WiFi systems; and converting units to low-carbon traction technologies.

Our strategy and planning practice brings our knowledge of the rail domain to broader organisational consultancy and the long-term development of transport networks.

We support clients ranging from governments and industry regulators to operators and product manufacturers, supporting them through every stage of the project life cycle, starting with initial scoping through to implementation and evaluation.

Whether preparing an economic impact assessment for an entirely new railway or defining organisation-wide cyber security responses, we also help senior decision makers present their plans to technical and non-technical audiences with a transparency that builds trust with stakeholders.